Love Your Neighbor

God, Love, Relationships 0

Has the man no hand that you might grasp, no eyes into which yours might gaze far deeper than your vaunted intellect can follow?  Is there not, I ask, anything in him to love?  Who said you were to be of one opinion?  It is the Lord who asks you to be of one heart.  Does the Lord love the man?  Can the Lord love where there is nothing to love?  Are you wiser than he, inasmuch as you perceive impossibility where he has failed to discover it?

— George MacDonald, Your Life in Christ, p. 206

Mastery Over Compliance

Parenting, Teenagers 0

We stay connected with our teenagers as they pursue their independence not by trying to make them compliant to our wishes but by staying focused on their developing mastery in and over their lives.  Our job is to help them become experts on themselves and to help them discover what they want for themselves.  This is definitely not top-down parenting, but neither is it laissez-faire parenting.  Instead, this approach recognizes that healthy teenagers need to struggle with and for their autonomy; when parents recognize and embrace this developmental reality, the relationship is able to sidestep many of the struggles associated with stereotypical teenage rebellion.  Issues of independence and dependence, viewed through the goal of mastery, become a continuum rather than a dichotomy.

— Michael Riera, PhD, Staying Connected to Your Teenager, p. 95

Forward on our Journey

Letting Go, Life 0

Wouldn’t it be easier to skip this whole business?  If we can’t hang on to our desires, wouldn’t it be simpler not to acknowledge them in the first place?

Probably.  But it doesn’t work that way.  There’s something magical and necessary about the process, the way it stands.  The victory, joy, and growth aren’t achieved by avoiding.  The rewards come by overcoming.  Each time we surrender, each time we let go, we’ll be propelled forward on our journey.  We’ll be moved to a deeper level of play.

— Melody Beattie, Beyond Codependency, p. 243-244

A Conversational Walk with God

God, Guidance, Life 0

I’ll tip my hand to one assumption I am making.  I assume that an intimate, conversational walk with God is available, and is meant to be normal.  I’ll push that a step further.  I assume that if you don’t find that kind of relationship with God, your spiritual life will be stunted.  And that will handicap the rest of your life.  We can’t find life without God, and we can’t find God if we don’t know how to walk intimately with him.

— John Eldredge, Walking with God, p. 7

Stay Curious

Marriage, Relationships 0

The key here is going slowly and staying curious.  Again and again, we have seen couples turn things around simply by asking a lot of questions in the spirit of inquiry, rather than by jumping in to explain themselves.

The rule to remember is this:  Understanding comes before explaining.  Most people reverse this and try their hardest to get their partner to see things their way.  It’s truly uncanny how it shifts when you can really hear your partner, when you can say “tell me more” and mean it.  This, of course, is difficult when what your mate is telling you is hard to hear.  But when you can hold on to it, this approach creates absolutely the right atmosphere for intimate disclosure.

— Ellyn Bader, PhD, and Peter T. Pearson, PhD, Tell Me No Lies, p. 121

Give More Love

Forgiveness, Love, Parenting 0

If there’s bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love.  That always works, you know.  People say that we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you’re only punishing yourself.  And what’s the point of that?

— Mma Potokwane in The Good Husband of Zebra Drive, by Alexander McCall Smith

The Will to Walk

God, Guidance, Obedience, Trust 0

Merely to override a human will (as His felt presence in any but the faintest and most mitigated degree would certainly do) would be for Him useless.  He cannot ravish.  He can only woo.  For His ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with Him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.  He is prepared to do a little overriding at the beginning.  He will set them off with communications of His presence which, though faint, seem great to them, with emotional sweetness, and easy conquest over temptation.  But He never allows this state of affairs to last long.  Sooner or later He withdraws, if not in fact, at least from their conscious experience, all those supports and incentives.  He leaves the creature to stand up on its own legs — to carry out from the will alone duties which have lost all relish.  It is during such trough periods, much more than during the peak periods, that it is growing into the sort of creature He wants it to be.  Hence the prayers offered in the state of dryness are those which please Him best. . . .   He cannot ‘tempt’ to virtue as we do to vice.  He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there, He is pleased even with their stumbles.

— Screwtape in The Screwtape Letters, by C. S. Lewis, quoted in A Year with C. S. Lewis, p. 136

Something Better Is Brewing.

Letting Go, Life, Obedience, Trust 0

This is at least some of what it means to “wait on the Lord.”  Waiting on God does not mean passive indifference — hanging around and doing nothing.  It has more to do with saying no to impulsive, spur-of-the-moment actions or decisions, and by so doing, saying yes to something you know will satisfy much better down the line.  Those who have not yet learned how to wait on the Lord may tend to indulge in something immediate that only half satisfies.  But Christians who have fostered a degree of self-control — Christians who know God better — don’t mind putting pleasure on hold.  They know something better is brewing down the line.

— Joni Eareckson Tada, Pearls of Great Price, May 2 entry

Until He Finds It

God, Love 0

This God’s love is a redemptive love; a patient, kind love that never gives up (I Corinthians 13).  This Father is a shepherd who, as Jesus taught, does not give up seeking his beloved, wayward sheep, but looks for it until he finds it (Luke 15:4).  His covenant with creation will not allow him to abandon it to its own darkness, but commits him to redeeming it in its entirety.

The love of God in the New Testament, as in the Old, is perfectly compatible with divine wrath and punishment (Heb 12:7-11).  However, such punishment is always a means to an end, and such wrath is never the last word.  The last word is always grace.

— Gregory MacDonald, The Evangelical Universalist, p. 103